Forget Not

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. -- Proverbs 3:5-6

It is a familiar couple of verses, ones that we have all read and heard, perhaps quoted or added to some young person's birthday card.  If I am not careful, though, this wise spiritual counsel will be overlooked, consigned to the shelf where I keep all the things I know too well.  Can a thing be so central that it is forgotten? 

What I need is not always what I want.  Certainly what I want is not always what is best.  As I have noted before, I don't have much trouble obeying God so long as His will and mine are in agreement.  The old nature, like the proverbial broken clock, will point the right way now and then.  Or, as my brother once said, I'm easy to get along with if you let me have my way. 

We have probably all had the experience of wanting something that we thought would be the only thing we would ever want only find little satisfaction when we finally acquired it.  It is almost a law of human nature that everything we do get, no matter how wonderful it seemed when it was not ours, loses some of its allure and attraction once we possess it.  I have found that is one of the best features of surprise and unsought gifts we receive.  Something I had no idea I ever wanted can become one of my most prized possessions. 

Most all of us Pentecostals have a special understanding of Romans 8:26-27, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."  It can be hard to know how to pray in every situation.  Yet a believer doesn't have to be Pentecostal or Charismatic to yield to the Spirit of God, to say with the Lord, "Nevertheless, Thy will be done."  It's so easy a Primitive Baptist can do it. 

As I have matured - a little - I have come to realize that socks and drawers and t-shirts are actually pretty good things to get for Christmas or one's birthday.  The latest electronic gadget may be fascinating for a day or two, and it may be handy on occasion, but underwear, like the mercies of God, should be new every morning.  Or at least clean every morning.  It is nice to have new socks to replace the ones I've worn holes in or to pull out a t-shirt that isn't stretched, threadbare and stained. 

God gives us wisdom so we can act righteously, sensibly, and courageously when we are under pressure.  Sometimes He gives us relationships that are one-sided, where we are doing a lot of giving, serving, supporting, and encouraging because the more we give out, the more He can pour in.  We find ourselves in places that hurt so much we want to fall apart, but we need to stand, so He gives us strength. 

We say, "Trust God.  Have faith in God."  It sounds trite and not terribly helpful, but it is the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel.  Do you think it is possible to forget what I want for a while and be happy with what God gives me?  I don't know, but I want to find out.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, ... who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's (Psalm 103:1-5).

Vane Repetition

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.  What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  -- Luke 11:9-13

It seems like a good day to talk about prayer given the situation among us this week.  Let us begin at the bottom. 

There are many tales and not a few jokes regarding what we might call the “three wishes” problem.  The one that comes to mind, after one about the mermaid best forgotten, finds three men marooned on a desert island.  A bottle washes ashore.  The men open it to release a genie that is, of course, willing to pay for freedom at the usual and customary Djinn Union rate -- three wishes, which, happily, can be divided equally among the desperate sojourners.  The first wisher asks to be whisked off to his home in New York City, and, in a flash, he is gone to reunite with his family and friends and head off for beer and pizza.  The second asks to go to San Francisco with the same result.  The third man looks wistfully about and says, “I wish my two friends were back here.”

Unlike jinn, mermaids, Shakespearean witches, et al, God responds to us as a loving and all-knowing Father.   A more appropriate depiction is the “Old Man”, Darren McGavin’s character, from A Christmas Story, watching in delighted and rapt communion with his son as he receives his sought-after gift, even vicariously mimicking Ralphie’s movements as he loads the Red Ryder.  The Lord is no Coyote trickster.  There is no bait-and-switch, only, perhaps, a delay or a deferment to enhance the longing, to solidify and consolidate our desires, to make our joy and rejoicing sharper and sweeter.  “Delight yourself in the Lord,” the Psalmist reminds us, “and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  We get, as we noted before, not what we say, but who we are.

This leads us to the necessity of importunity.  Prayer changes us.  It strips away our facades, our agendas, and our illusions.  It is the very act of asking and asking and asking, seeking and seeking and seeking, knocking and knocking and knocking that transforms us from selfish to self-less.  Next time you watch The Searchers consider how the characters start out and how they end.  What is it that causes that change except the seeking -- day after day, season after season, and year after year.  Debbie changes, becomes another person, but, in the end, she is that which has been sought all along.  The ends and motivations change, from rescue to revenge to restoration and redemption.  

Like the vanes on an arrow shaft, persistent prayer gives us stability and gets us on target.  Sin, is, after all, missing the mark.  

I have before mentioned answered prayers for temporal, material needs and situations.  The thing I notice, looking back, is that those answers only appeared to be material.  Each one that I can recall – and probably more that I cannot -- was like the creation of another chamber in the outward spiraling shell of the nautilus.   God’s responses to our prayers have eternal consequences, no matter how small or large the issue appears to be because those answers move us toward maturity – sometimes called in the Bible “perfection” -- that last chamber in the shell that is “the measure of the stature of Christ”. 

Sometimes, as we pray, we will get an answer.  I cannot describe that experience.  It may be an overwhelming sense of peace, a vision, a phrase, the proverbial still, small voice, a dream, a fragment out of a conversation, a verse in the Bible lighting up like a neon sign, or any number of other possibilities – I don’t know.  You will know it when it happens.  The old-timers called this “praying through”.  They would simply not stop until it happened, until they heard “yes” or “no” or, maybe, “no, not now.”  More than forty years ago, I knew a boy who was bleeding to death in the aftermath of a violent incident.  An old preacher was on his knees some fifty miles from the hospital praying, over and over, a verse from Ezekiel.  Sometime in the darkness after midnight, the old man stopped.  No phone calls were made back in those days, but he knew the bleeding had ceased, noted the hour in the margin of his Bible and went to sleep. 

Other times, we have no choice other than to get up and keeping going, not knowing for certain, but believing and constantly praying.  The answer is such that it may come only by degrees, little by little, strangely shrouded in mist and fog.  We may be set free from a bad habit or a besetting sin in a moment.  Often, though, it is like bush-hogging sprouts.  We just keep knocking them down until the buried root has exhausted its vitality and can no longer generate above-ground growth.  Even then, it is a good idea to have that ground sown thickly with good seed to smother and break down what lies beneath. 

Prayers to surrender our lives to Christ, to be filled with the Spirit, to walk in obedience and humility are always – at least, in my experience – of the “ask and keep on asking” variation.  It may become almost an unconscious thing for the more saintly among us, but I cannot see that it stops this side of the grave.  Since I am still dragging this shell around, I must assume that there is yet another chamber to enter, one more rung on that ever-upward, ever-larger spiraling stairway.  There will be another work for us to do, that we could only do from that place and that position. 

And we will find that to do it, we must pray.